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Behind the Spells: Magic Missile
The Behind the Spells Series
One of the more flavorful things of the original AD&D was
that many of the spells were named after their creator, generally
famous magic-users played by one of the original D&D-ers.
This has carried on even into modern day, though the proper names
were dropped when put into the SRD (the source of the rules
non-Wizards of the Coast d20 authors can use.)
But who invented the other spells, particularly the really common
ones like magic missile and fireball? What's the story behind
them?
That's what the "Behind the Spell" series is designed
to answer in a slightly humorous but also useful way. It's
presented somewhat like those TV shows that expose the secrets of
an earlier, popular TV show, complete with host. In this case, an
ancient Gold Dragon.
As near as I can tell, it's an ongoing series of PDFs. Weekly,
bi-monthly, something like that. Short (3-5 pages), but priced
cheap ($1). It's from Ronin
Arts (Phil Reed's company), but by Bret Boyd, who you might
know from various RPG related boards as Napftor and from a
number of good quality but low profile RPG products
Behind the Spells: Magic Missile
This is the first in the series, on the magic missile spell.
Basically it gives some background on the creator of the spell,
basically who he was, why he created it, the circumstances
surrounding its invention. And where he invented it. Then some
ways to use the spell that are not readily obvious. One example
in this case is how the magic missile might not be able to damage
items, but probably can nudge them a bit.
Lastly, there is some "related research" which is
essentially about variations of the magic missile spell. A half
dozen are given, 5 ideas and one writeup. The writeup is
"Magic Sickles", a version that only affects plants,
and basically works like a scythe or machete.
The PDF itself is plain, with no artwork except perhaps the logo
for "Behind the Spells", if you count that as art. It's
quite easy to read though and the lay out is clean and concise
with nice, normal fonts. (I hate weird fonts)
Lots of products are based on clever ideas, but fail in the
execution. This is both clever in idea and in practice. The
background does a good job of explaining why the spell has the
features that it does. Why it always hits, and possibly why it's
one of those spells that actually isn't all that useful for a 1st
level mage, but can be useful higher up.
It also gives you a really good adventure seed: Finding (and of
course, looting) the wizard who invented this's secret lab. It
does a good job of describing both the lab itself and the general
area around it.
The other uses for the magic missile spell given are reasonable.
Non-standard ways of using it, but nothing really invented out of
the blue, just really parsing the description of the spell. So
while this is really up to the DM, I think most would agree with
the material here.
On the other hand, I think the variant spell examples needed some
work. The one that was statted out wasn't all that useful (just
affected plants) and the flavor text for it doesn't really match
up with economics - it mentioned that farmers often hire mages to
cast it to help their harvest, but the scale is much too small
compared to an actual farm.
And while a few other variants are mentioned, they aren't
statted. I think we could have gotten stats for 1-2 more.
Final Thoughts
All in all though, I think this is very much worth buying. For
the value of things worth a $1, I have a test, which would I
rather have? This, or two White Castles? (Or if you are from the
South, Krystal. Which are pretty much the same, except I think
taste slightly better. And unlike White Castle, they've never
refused to serve me.)
The answer would be this, though much like only buying (and
eating) 2 White Castles, you'd be hungry for more. Fortunately,
this isn't like White Castle for me, and you can buy more, I
think there's at least 3 others available, with more down the
pipe.
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